The ServiceNow® Agent Client Collector application is a tool that enables you to monitor the service availability, performance, and infrastructure of your system. Agent Client Collector was enhanced and updated in the Vancouver release.

Agent Client Collector highlights for the Vancouver release

  • Organize your monitored components by viewing the dashboards for each monitored technology.
  • Monitor the health and performance of your system with the Windows log monitoring checks.
  • Get faster recovery times for your anomaly alerts.

See Agent Client Collector for more information.

Important: Agent Client Collector is available in the ServiceNow Store. For details, see the "Activation information" section of these release notes.

New in the Vancouver release

Using the new Windows event log check
Use Linux and Microsoft Exchange checks to monitor the health and performance of your system.
Metric Intelligence improvements
Use anomaly labels to reduce the number of false-positive anomaly alerts in Metric Intelligence.
Metric Intelligence Advanced Promotion Engine
  • Reduce the number of false-positive anomaly alerts by setting rules to determine which alerts to promote to IT alerts.
  • Consolidate your promoted alerts into a single alert. By using alert grouping, you can reduce the number of anomaly alerts that your system receives.
Discover the resources in your Kubernetes clusters continuously
Starting in version 3.9.2, use Cloud Native Operations (CNO) for Visibility to discover the resources in your Kubernetes clusters continuously as an alternative to pattern-based discovery.
  • Discover the resources in Kubernetes clusters deployed in on-premises and Cloud environments in near real-time without the need to enter any credentials in your ServiceNow instance.
  • Ensure that the changes in the resources are promptly reported to the instance and updated in the Configuration Management Database (CMDB).
Viewing additional platforms on the Monitoring Technology Dashboard
Use the Monitoring Technology Dashboard to monitor for:
Using metric connector enhancements
Starting in version 3.9.0, use agent-less System Center Operations Manager (SCOM) connectors for high-performance SCOM metric integration.
Application patterns for the Agent Client Collector
Run application patterns through the Agent Client Collector. Application patterns enable discovering details about applications running on an agent’s host.
Support for macOS endpoints
Use Agent Client Collector for Visibility to support the macOS Ventura operating system.
Using regular expressions in the allow list
Enable complex character combinations in an allow list command string by using the use_regex parameter.
Executing check commands in execv mode
Enhance your security during checks by using the execv execution mode.
Using third-party components
Use the latest Sensu and osquery components with the configuration options in the acc.yml file.
Enhanced system properties
Starting in version 3.3.1, monitor the behavior of the Agent Client Collector policies and framework configuration with the Policy Calculation and Framework Configuration system properties.
Configuration data files added to checks
Starting in version 3.3.1, provide enhanced data collection in the Agent Client Collector by communicating the instance data with the agent. The configuration data files are also sent to the agent’s associated MID Server.
MongoDB checks
Starting in version 3.9.2, monitor the MongoDB resources with additional metrics.

Changed in this release

Automatic loading of the allow list after check execution
When executing a check, the allow list loads automatically. You don't need to restart the agent.
Automatic MID Server selection
Starting in version 3.3.1:
  • Receive additional MID Server information to be used as alternative points of communication during automatic MID Server selection.
  • Automatic MID Server selection is off by default.
Retrieving metrics for cloud resources
Starting in version 3.3.1, use Azure checks and policies to retrieve metrics for virtual resources in the cloud.
Monitoring Technology Dashboards
Starting in version 3.3.1:
  • Filter metrics by selected CI in the AWS and GCP Monitoring Technology Dashboards.
  • Use the updated Monitoring Technology Dashboard for Azure. The dashboard contains additional tabs which provide more information on your Azure infrastructure.
  • Viewing Monitoring Technology Dashboards requires the dashboard_admin role in addition to the existing agent_client_collector_admin role.
Metric rules
Starting in version 3.9.0, configure manual thresholds for generating metric alerts using the Metric Rules feature instead of the Static Thresholds UI.
SNMP checks
Starting in version 3.9.2, SNMP checks work by default with v3.

Removed in this release

  • AWS and Azure connectors are not supported in Metric Intelligence.
  • Starting in version 3.3.1, the Azure Monitoring Technology Dashboard has been deprecated with the update of the Azure policies.

Activation information

Agent Client Collector is available with the activation of the Agent Client Collector Framework plugin (sn_agent) and the Agent Client Collector Monitoring plugin (sn_itmon) in an instance on which Event Management is installed.

Related ServiceNow applications and features

Event Management
Agent Client Collector works within an instance on which Event Management is installed to monitor infrastructure components. Agent Client Collector and Event Management share some connectors that pull metric data and events from the same data sources.
Health Log Analytics
The Health Log Analytics application predicts IT issues before they impact users. The application helps you to solve issues faster by ingesting, analyzing, and correlating machine-generated log data in real time.